HC Deb 09 February 1926 vol 191 cc849-57
Mr. THURTLE

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to authorise local authorities to incur expenditure, when deemed expedient, in conveying knowledge of birth control methods to married women who desire it. This Bill seeks to remove one of the disabilities of poverty it is in no sense a party Measure, and I am moving it entirely on my own responsibility as a Member of the House. I believe it arouses a certain amount of opposition, but I am glad to be able to say it cuts right across the ordinary party divisions, and commands a large measure of support in all quarters. The particular purpose of the Bill is to make known to many poor women information which will enable them to restrict their families and which is at present enjoyed and utilized by wealthier women. I imagine it is generally agreed in these days that poverty ought not to be any bar to knowledge, yet, as a matter of fact., in regard to this question of the restriction of families, poverty is a bar to a very large number of working women. Women of the wealthy and the middle classes are able to get this information in regard to the restriction of the size of their families. The fact that they are doing so is shown in the birth rate statistics. Year after year it becomes more marked in the upper and middle classes that there is a distinct falling off in the birth rate, but so far as the poorer people are concerned the tendency is for the birth rate to remain almost stationary.

I should like to quote some figures in support of this contention as to the difference between the wealthy and middle classes and the poorer classes. In Westminster the birth rate is 11.2 per thousand. In Shoreditch, the poorest and probably the most crowded area of the City, the birth rate is 25 per thousand; in other words, it is more than twice the birth rate of Westminster. If you go to Chelsea, another comparatively rich borough, the birth rate is only 14.3 per thousand. We have this extraordinary and in my view indefensible anomaly. In those districts where overcrowding is most intense, where poverty is most acute, where all the elemental necessities for healthy child life are most conspicuous by their absence, you get a very high birth rate and in other districts, where conditions are infinitely better, you have a comparatively low birth rate. No Members of the House are going to contend that that state of affairs is satisfactory, either from a national or a human standpoint. It is said we are breeding from the wrong stock. I am not prepared to accept that. There is no reason to assume that the children of the working classes are one whit inferior, either physically or mentally, to the children of the better-off classes. What is true is that as soon as they come into life they never get anything like equality of opportunity with the other classes.

The Bill I am introducing is not intended to impose any charge upon the national Exchequer. It merely lays down that local authorities who so desire may incur this expenditure in giving to married women information which will enable them to restrict their families. It is permissive merely. I ask the House to realise that there is no likelihood of a popularly elected public authority deciding to take action in this matter unless it is convinced of the necessity for it and unless, too, it is convinced that it has the backing of the majority of the electorate behind it, otherwise it will be inviting electoral disaster. There is no new principle involved in the Bill. It is merely an extension of the generally accepted theory that we should spread useful information for the purpose of maintaining the national standard of health. The whole of our public services are based on that principle. We are expending money in broadcasting information about sanitation, personal hygiene, diet and matters of that sort. We are expending money in broadcasting information about tuberculosis and venereal disease, and we are doing that solely on the ground of maintaining the public health. The Ministry of Health itself is engaged in a fight on behalf of national fitness, and there is not a phase of that fight which is not made more difficult by the fact that in the very poorest districts women are having much larger families than is good either for them or for the State. It is in order to remove this grievance that I am asking the House to allow this Measure to pass.

4.0 P.M.

I am a Socialist, and I would be the last man to pretend that this restriction of families is any real cure for the root problem of poverty. The social inequalities and disabilities which afflict the mass of the poor people have their roots much deeper than this. But, even as a Socialist, I do say that knowledge which would enable working-class people to exercise a wise restriction in the size of their families would have an immediate ameliorative effect on the condition of those workers, and it is for that reason that, as a Socialist, I am prepared to advocate this Bill. I want, finally, to put in a plea, and a very strong plea, for the over-burdened wife and mother. There is no more tragic figure in our civilisation than the over-burdened mother of a large family in the poor, over-crowded districts in this country, and, if anyone is entitled to consideration in connection with this question, it is that mother. As I have already explained, the wealthy women and the middle-class women have this knowledge. Surely the working woman who has got to go through the travail of childbirth and who has got to be responsible for the care of the children after they are born is entitled to consideration as to the number of children she should bear.

These are days of sex equality, and, if the House is honest, it must realise some implications of that sex equality. I submit that one of them is that a woman is entitled so far as practicable to decide what the size of her family should be. There are thousands, hundreds of thousands, of working-class women in this country to-day who have not the necessary knowledge. As a consequence, many of them have very much larger families than they want to have. Many of them spend weary years during their child-bearing period, worrying about the possibility of another child coming to add to their burdens. As a consequence of these anxieties, they are frequently thrown into the aims of quacks and charlatans of all kinds, and in their desperation they frequently resort to all kinds of hazardous and dangerous expedients, with very serious consequences to themselves. I submit that it is time a helping hand was held out to these women and that the book of knowledge was made open to them.

I appeal to the House to give this Bill a First Reading. I appeal, particularly, to my hon. Friends on this side of the House who believe in equality as between rich and poor, and many of whom make the proud boast that they have never yet deserted the cause of poverty, on this occasion to stand by the cause of poverty and rote for this Resolution. I appeal to my hon. Friends below the Gangway, because this Bill is in strict accordance with the good sound Radical doctrine that there should be equality of opportunity with regard to knowledge. I appeal to them to support it. And I appeal to Members on the other side of the House to support it, not on the comparatively selfish ground that by means of a wise exercise of birth control the problems of overcrowding and poverty would be diminished without any cost to themselves but on the higher and better ground that they tee believe that, while knowledge of this kind is available to the rich and the middle-class women, it should not be denied to the very poor.

Mr. BARR

I rise to oppose the First Reading of this Bill, first of all, on the ground that I think it raises far too large an issue, and is far too controversial to be settled under the Ten Minute Rule and with the limited discussion that we can have. I recognise the spirit in which my hon. Friend spoke, and it is quite true that this is not a party Measure. I should have been glad if he had elaborated that a little, and I will do it for him, so far as this particular side of the House is concerned. At the Liverpool Conference, held on 29th September, the Resolution of the Executive was carried against an Amendment in the very same terms in which the hon. Member is moving now by a majority, on a card vote, of 771,000, and this was the finding of that Labour Conference: That the subject of birth control is in its nature not one that should be made a political, party issue, but should remain a matter upon which members of the party should be free to hold and to promote their individual convictions. I submit that by this Measure you are making it a political issue, and will tend to make it a party issue. I would call attention to what transpired under the Labour Government. On 30th July, 1924, my hon. Friend put a question to the then Minister of Health, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley), and this was the answer: My view is that the institutions provided by local authorities at the cost of public funds should not be used for purposes such as that referred to in the question, which are the subject of controversy, without an express direction from Parliament."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th July, 1924; col. 2050, Vol. 176.] That direction my hon. Friend now seeks to give, but I would remind him and the House of what happened a week later when he put a further question to the right hon. Gentleman. On the 6th August, 1924, he asked him whether he had executive power already to do this, and this was the answer: I am not quite sure whether I have, but, even if I had, I would not introduce such a revolutionary change."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th August, 1924; col. 2909, Vol. 176.] If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston considers this a revolutionary change, I certainly cannot take the innocent view of it that my hon. Friend seeks to put before the House. He has spoken of the deplorable condition of ignorance on the part of very poor women. I think that is greatly exaggerated, and I would quote Mrs. Harrison Bell, a member of the Labour Executive, who at the. Liverpool Conference spoke on behalf of the Executive, and said: Many of them knew perfectly well that it was quite easy to obtain the information; indeed, speaking as a dweller in a working-class neighbourhood, it was very difficult to avoid the information which was thrust into people's doors. I consider that I am as class conscious as my hon. Friend, and I strongly insist and desire that the best medical information and the best medical skill should be brought to the doors of the very poor But that is quite a different question from entering upon a national policy of birth control and propaganda. Economically, it is a policy of despair. Economically, it is exactly the same argument as that in regard to emigration. I heard an hon. Member from the opposite benches last Thursday say that actually there were more persons in employment now than in 1914. Some draw from that the conclusion that all our present trouble is due to the population that has arrived in the last 10 years. Malthus in his "Principle of Population" objected to what he called the "perfectibility of society." His argument was that the population tended always to increase at a greater rate than the means of subsistence, and that we would be in a far worse condition but for the beneficent results of wars and epidemics and famines and numerous beneficent diseases. I believe the very opposite. I believe that a bountiful Creator has provided ample resources for all, and that if we had only wise production and just distribution there would be ample for all the people. It is because I believe in the adequacy of nature and in what Malthus called the "Perfectibility of Society" that I sit on these benches, and find the real solution of our troubles, not in the limitation of families which my hon. Friend is advocating, but in so using our resources that there shall be ample provision for all the people, and that we shall find the wealth of our nation, in the words of John Russell, "not in the least number but in the greatest number of happy human, beings."

One word more and I have done. Time and delicacy forbid my entering into the moral aspects of this issue, save to say this: These moral instincts and these religious prejudices, call them what you will, are after all the purest, the finest, the most powerful, and the most potent influences in the uplift of mankind; and in questions like this, are just as sure a guide as science itself, and if we choose to defy them or to ignore them, we do so at our own peril, and at the peril of the State. Therefore, on this and other grounds, which I have not time to state, I invite this House to give to this Measure even on the Motion for its First Reading

a determined, a decisive, and an overwhelming rejection.

Question put, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to authorise local authorities to incur expenditure, when deemed expedient, in conveying knowledge of birth control methods to married women who desire it.

The House divided: Ayes, 81 Noes, 167.

Division No. 3.] AYES. [4.14 p.m.
Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel Henderson, Lieut.-Col. V. L. (Bootle) Peto, Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)
Apsley, Lord Hirst, W. (Bradford, South) Peto, G. (Somerset, Frome)
Barker, G. (Monmouth, Abertillery) Holt, Captain H. P. Potts, John S.
Barnes, A. Hopkins, J. W. W. Preston, William
Boothby, R. J. G. Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.) Ramsden, E.
Bowyer, Captain G. E. W. Huntingfield, Lord Reid, Capt. A. S. C. (Warrington)
Briggs, J. Harold Hurst, Gerald B. Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint)
Briscoe, Richard George Knox, Sir Alfred Ropner, Major L.
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Berks, Newby) Lamb, J. Q. Saklatvala, Shapurji
Churchman, Sir Arthur C. Lansbury, George Smith, Rennie (Penistone)
Cockerill, Brigadier-General G. K. Lindley, F. W. Snell, Harry
Cohen, Major J. Brunel Loder, J. de V. Snowden, Rt. Hon. Philip
Cooper, A. Duff Looker, Herbert William Spender Clay, Colonel H.
Cove, W. G. Lumley, L. R. Taylor, R. A.
Crookshank, Col. C. de W. (Berwick) Lunn, William Thomson, Trevelyan (Middlesbro, W.)
Curzon, Captain Viscount Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.) Trevelyan, Rt. Hon. C. P.
Davies, Evan (Ebbw Vale) McDonnell, Colonel Hon. Angus Varley, Frank B.
Edmondson, Major A. J. MacIntyre, I. Wallhead, Richard C.
Everard, W. Lindsay Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L. (Kingston-on-Hull)
Fairfax, Captain J. G. March, S. White, Lieut.-Colonel G. Dalrymple
Fenby, T. D. Meyer, Sir Frank Wilkinson, Ellen C.
Fermoy, Lord Montague, Frederick Williams, Herbert G. (Reading)
Gee, Captain R. Moore-Brabazon, Lieut.-Col. J. T. C. Williams, T. (York, Don Valley)
Glyn, Major R. G. C. Morris, R. H. Windsor, Walter
Grant, J. A. Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.) Womersley, W. J.
Gunston, Captain D. W. Oliver, George Harold Wood, B. C. (Somerset, Bridgwater)
Hammersley, S. S. Paling, W.
Harrison, G. J. C. Pethick-Lawrence, F. W. TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Mr. Thurtle and Sir W. Davison.
NOES.
Ainsworth, Major Charles Davies, Dr. Vernon Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)
Ashley, Lt-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W. Davies, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil) Hall, F. (York, W. R., Normanton)
Atkinson, C. Davies, Ellis (Denbigh, Denbigh) Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Shetland)
Baker, Walter Davies, Sir Thomas (Cirencester) Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry
Barclay-Harvey, C. M. Davison, J. E. (Smethwick) Harland, A.
Barnett, Major Sir Richard Dean, Arthur Wellesley Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington)
Barnston, Major Sir Harry Dixey, A. C. Haslam, Henry C.
Barr, J. Dixon, Captain Rt. Hon. Herbert Hayday, Arthur
Batey, Joseph Dunnico, H. Hayes, John Henry
Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake) Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty) Henderson, T. (Glasgow)
Berry, Sir George Elliot, Captain Walter E. Hennessy, Major J. R. G.
Betterton, Henry B. England, Colonel A. Hirst, G. H.
Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W. Erskine, James Malcolm Monteith Hogg, Rt. Hon. Sir D. (St. Marylebone)
Brittain, Sir Harry Evans, Capt. Ernest (Welsh Univer.) Hohler, Sir Gerald Fitzroy
Brocklebank, C. E. R. Falle, Sir Bertram G. Homan, C. W. J.
Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I. Fanshawe, Commander G. D. Hope, Sir Harry (Forfar)
Brown, James (Ayr and Bute) Fielden, E. B. Howard, Capt. Hon. D. (Cumb., N.)
Buchanan, G. Forestier-Walker, Sir L. Hume-Williams, Sir W. Ellis
Bullock, Captain M. Forrest, W. Hurd, Percy A.
Burman, J. B. Foster, Sir Harry S. Jackson, Sir H. (Wandsworth, Cen't)
Burton, Colonel H. W. Frece, Sir Walter de James, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. Cuthbert
Cautley, Sir Henry S. Gates, Percy Jephcott, A. R.
Cecil, Rt. Hon. Sir Evelyn (Aston) Gibbins, Joseph Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)
Charleton, H. C. Gibbs, Col. Rt. Hon. George Abraham Kennedy, T.
Christie, J. A. Gillett, George M. Kenworthy, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.
Clarry, Reginald George Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John Kindersley, Major G. M.
Clynes, Rt. Hon. John R. Gosling, Harry King, Captain Henry Douglas
Collins, Sir Godfrey (Greenock) Gower, Sir Robert Lane Fox, Col. Rt. Hon. George R.
Compton, Joseph Grattan-Doyle, Sir N. Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh Vere
Connolly, M. Greene, W. P. Crawford Macquisten, F. A.
Cope, Major William Gretton, Colonel John Malone, Major P. B.
Craig, Capt. Rt. Hon. C. C. (Antrim) Groves, T. Mitchell, E. Rosslyn (Paisley)
Crack, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Grundy, T. W. Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark)
Cunliffe, Sir Joseph Herbert Guest, J. (York, Hemsworth) Mitchell, Sir W. Lane (Streatham)
Moles, Thomas Rose, Frank H. Thomas, Sir Robert John (Anglesey)
Moore, Lieut. Colonel T. C. R. (Ayr) Ruggles-Brise, Major E. A. Tinker, John Joseph
Moreing, Captain A. H. Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter Townend, A. E.
Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury) Russell, Alexander Witt (Tynemouth) Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement
Morrison-Bell, Sir Arther Clive Salter, Dr. Alfred Waddington, R.
Murchison, C. K. Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham) Wallace, Captain D. E.
Nall, Lieut.-Colonel Sir Joseph Sandeman, A. Stewart Warrender, Sir Victor
Naylor, T. E. Sandon, Lord Watson, Rt. Hon. W. (Carlisle)
Nicholson, Cot. Rt. Hn. W. G. (Ptrsf'ld.) Savery, S. S. Watts, Dr. T.
Nield, Rt. Hon. Sir Herbert Scrymgeour, E. Westwood, J.
Oman, Sir Charles William C. Sexton, James Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay)
Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan) Shaw, R. G. (Yorks, W. R., Sowerby) Williams, C. P. (Denbigh, Wrexham)
Penny, Frederick George Shepperson, E. W. Wilson, R. J. (Jarrow)
Perkins, Colonel E. K. Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield)
Ponsonby, Arthur Slesser, Sir Henry H. Wise, Sir Fredric
Pownall, Lieut.-Colonel Assheton Smithers, Waldron Wolmer, Viscount
Raine, W. Somerville, A. A. (Windsor) Wood, Sir Kingsley (Woolwich, W.)
Remer, J. R. Spencer, G. A. (Broxtowe) Wood, Sir S. Hill- (High Peak)
Remnant, Sir James Sprot, Sir Alexander Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)
Richardson, Sir P. W. (Sur'y, Ch'ts'y) Storry-Deans, R.
Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring) Streatfeild, Captain S. R. TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
Ritson, J. Sugden, Sir Wilfrid Mr. Blundell and Mr. Scurr.
Robinson, W. C. (Yorks, W. R., Elland) Sutton, J. E.